Review of Serif Craft Artist

Product Details

Manufacturer/Brand; Serif Craft Artist, Platinum Edition

RRP at time of writing: Around £40

Reason For Buying

My lovely husband had already given me Digital Scrapbook Artist v2 a couple of years ago, having taken a year and an online class to get my head around Adobe Photoshop Elements, I was wary of facing another momentous learning curve to learn this new software. I’m not a scrapbooker BUT have dabbled a little with digital scrapbooking and did enjoy it. Firstly as it is much more cost-effective you buy a digi kit of elements (like a pile of virtual stash) and the great thing is they never run out. Well, this Craft Artist is the next generation, it has all the elements of Digital Scrapbook Artist but lots of cool new features too. I want to use this for Art Journalling, making background papers to use in my own projects, to make card designs with. To make dimensional projects. They call this hybrid crafting, taking digital images or elements and combining what you create there with your more traditional skills of stamping, inking etc.

Pros/Cons

Pros

In the links section I will add a link to the Serif Daisy Trail site, where they list the difference between Craft Artist and Digital Scrapbook Artist.

A whole craft shop of goodies at your finger tips. You can re-use the elements in digi kits as often as you like. No more running out of letters half way through a project, or finding the shop has discontinued you favorite papers etc.

Mobility! I admit my laptop is quite a fast one, but if you put this software on your laptop you can create where ever you like! Great if you like to create with others, or want to take your creativity on holiday.

An excellent way to craft if you have limited space or limited dexterity. I recommend using a graphics tablet if you have limited hand dexterity, as its more comfortable than a mouse for long-term use. All the digi kits are available either to download or as collections on discs.

All the choices of card bases to design onto. Rather than just a square starting page as was the case with DSA2, although it had the option of creating your own custom sizes, it meant you had to work the sizes out for yourself. Now you have all kinds of card designs to play with.

Templates, as well as the card templates, this also has boxes, bags, bunting all kind of fun things to design onto.

You can design your own digi kits

Daisy Trail Community. Not in the box or anything, but this is a free to join online community with lots of friendly people. This is a great place to meet friends, ask questions and share your finished work.

Very handy for last-minute cards

Cons

As this is such a new program, there are a few reported kinks still in the program. Serif has excellent customer service and through Daisy Trail reported issues are being ironed out and resolved with updates to the program.

Build Quality

This program has been great, I haven’t had any major problems with it, a few printing issues but they are known and there are simple work arounds to any niggles that are still to be resolved.

Value for Money

Fantastic! Seriously this is superb value for money. You can do so much with this program. I highly recommend you get some of the Digi kit CD ROMS to expand your creative possibilities with the program, but you can create so many different projects and elements to use with your crafting. I love it.

Would I buy it Again?

Totally. The new features like card templates and gift bag templates are excellent and mean you don’t have to work them all out for yourself, just create onto what is there. I highly recommend this to anyone with youngsters as well. Kids can quickly work out how to use this to create their own pictures, books, cards and other projects.

Summing up

A superb program, the only limit is your imagination. Use the digi kits when you start out and as your confidence grows you can create your own digi kits from your own photographs. Personalise any project. I was anti digi crafting at first but I’m totally hooked.

It’s so much fun to play with, and you can create endless projects with this software. This will make the most wonderful gifts for friends and family. If you have celebrations coming up this will help you create your own stationary for those occasions, and with extra digi kits available either individually or as collections on DVDs you have a huge choice of themes.

If you are on the fence, download the trial version of the program and a few of the free digi kits to see if you like it. I really do love this program, it has changed the way I craft. You will save a fortune on background papers and there are lots of alphabets and embellishments on there too. Its like having your own craft shop on your computer. The best thing is, you don’t run out of things. If you want that paper again, you just print another one 😉 You can get as involved as you want to. Either create the whole project to print, and give as it is, or print multiple sheets with elements to layer on after printing, create your own decoupage.

Go on give it a go, its lots of fun. Check out Daisy Trail for lots of tutorials. The best thing about digital crafting is if your design goes astray there’s always the undo button. Love that programe you can do so much with it. Try having a search through your designs and print off some backing papers to create with as you would with usual crafting. Nice n easy to find your way round.

The best place to start is Daisy Trail, there is an online community you can join to ask specific questions but also a lot of tutorial videos to watch step by step how to do things. I learn better by watching someone demonstrate too. I haven’t done tutorials on it myself as don’t know how to get screenshots of the computer screen.

WHat is is you want to do? I can’t do screen shots from the computer, to do video tutorials on the program as I haven’t the technology to do that. I’ll try and help if you can give me an idea which template you wish to use or what you are stuck on 🙂

Have you tried Daisy Trail, there are lots of great tutorial videos on there and the Community is brillant for top tips and ideas 🙂

Just wanted to ask how well can this software do invitations? I tried the trial version and it seems I am having a hard time printing. What would you recommend I do? Any pointers on printing. Hmm… I wonder if there is a tutorial on this that I have not seen. Thank you!

In principle Craft Artist would be fantastic to create invitations with. The trial version doesn’t have all the ‘bells and whistles’ the full version has so you won’t have all the options available that the full package comes with. The quickest way to make invitations is to go to the templates section and pick a design from there. You can choose from card shapes and then pick pre made layouts that way, or if you have a limited number of digi kits, go to the kit you want to use and look for layouts from the drop down list.

HOpe that is of some help. I’d love to do tutorials on the software but not sure of the copyright issue with the images on there and also have no idea how to do screen shots/capture so that you see what I’m doing on the screen. Just describing stuff in writting would be very LONG and confusing for all concerned. {sob}

Have you tried the Daisy Trail site, that I’ve linked to at the side of the blog? There is a tab on there for tutorials and they are excellent.

The calendar pages I make are made with Photoshop, in principle you can create any thing with the software. You choose your elements and page sizes.

I have seen people make advent calendars with the software on the Daisy Trail website. If you want a template to create upon/around then try searching for digikits. Digikits contain the papers, materials, alphabets and embellishments that you combine for your projects.

My best advice would be to join the Daisy Trail forum, have a look around the online gallery and if you see a design that you like, get in touch with the person who made it and they will be able to tell you what kits they used to create it.

You can import jpeg, and tiff images into the program as photographs. So if you create your calendar template in another programe and can save the result into a format that Craft Artist can read, then you can bring it in that way.

Do get in touch with the people at Serif or Daisy Trail they are a wonderful company and very helpful to customers.

News Updates

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Billie :)

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